February 27, 2010 2:48 am by Jal
Imagine 365 movies/50,000 photos/45,500 MP3 songs into one small pendrive. Amazing isn’t it? It’s amazing because we are not talking external hard drives here; it’s a pen-drive! Kingston’s new DataTraveler® 310 USB pen drive has the storage capacity of a whooping 256GB which makes it the highest capacity pendrive available as of yet. Its twin sister DataTraveler® 300 also boasts the same storage capacity.
Along with high storage, it offers 25MB/s. Read and 12MB/s. Write data-transfer rates. Its dimensions are 2.90in x 0.87in x 0.63in and comes with a 5-year warranty. Moreover, a security software called ‘Password Traveler’ is also included.
Kingston DataTraveler® 310 USB Flash drive is available worldwide and you can buy it from Kingston’s site for $1,108. Pretty hefty isn’t it? The storage capacity and the price ;).
February 27, 2010 1:53 am by Jal
Recently Google announced the addition of the new ‘Nearby’ option that helps narrowing down search results based on location. This comes quite handy when searching for restaurants, historical and religious places, etc. around a particular area.
You can access the ‘Nearby’ feature using the ‘Search Options’. You need to enter the location and all the results will get narrowed down to that particular geographical location.
However, the ‘Nearby’ option is currently being shown only on Google.com domain and not on country specific domains like Google.co.in. So you can click the link below to force display the ‘Nearby’ option.
Click here to try the ‘Nearby’ option using Google.com domain
Though at times the results disappointed me, most of the times they were quite satisfying. You need to select the ‘City’, ‘Region’ and ‘State’ options appropriately as they all provide surprisingly varied results. Do check it out.
February 25, 2010 16:12 pm by Jal
According to the
Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy and the
End of Support page at Microsoft, this comes as a reminder to all the users of Windows 2000, XP SP2 and Vista RTM that the software giant is going to end its support for the aging OSes. Back in 2008, Microsoft declared the exact dates when the above mentioned operating systems will enter the ‘End of Support’ phase.
Important Dates:
April 13, 2010 – Windows Vista RTM reaches ‘End of Support’ phase. Microsoft ends support for Windows Vista RTM (also known as Windows Vista SP0).
July 13, 2010 – Windows 2000 (all versions) and Windows XP SP2 reaches ‘End of Support’ phase. Microsoft ends support for Windows 2000 (all versions) and Windows XP SP2.
What should I do?
If you are running Windows Vista RTM then you should install Vista Service Pack 1, followed by Vista Service Pack 2. [Download Vista Service Packs]
If you are running Windows XP SP2 then you should install XP Service Pack 3. [Download Windows XP SP3]
If you are running Windows 2000 then you should upgrade your OS to a more stable and advanced one like Windows 7.
In any case, the best option is to upgrade your OS to Windows 7. At TechExplorer, we highly recommend using Windows 7 because it is more secure, highly advanced and exceptionally stable than all its predecessors.
For more on how to upgrade to Windows 7, click here.
February 25, 2010 14:31 pm by Jal
Have you ever ran into an irritating situation where you have about 10+ windows and 7-8 programs running in full throttle? And all you want is to get rid of all of them!? Well, there is a small utility that might come your rescue in times like these –
CloseAll.
CloseAll closes all. I mean everything. One click and poof! Every window, every program just closes. Well, that is all it does. Quite awesome eh! 
Once you download CloseAll (download link at the end of the post), just right-click on ‘CloseAll.exe’ and select ‘Pin to Taskbar’ to create its shortcut in the taskbar.
If you don’t find the ‘Pin to Taskbar’ option or using Windows XP, then simply right-click on ‘CloseAll.exe’ and click ‘Send to > Desktop (create shortcut)’ to create a shortcut on your desktop.
Download CloseAll / 30KB
February 25, 2010 11:54 am by Jal
Opened up Gmail this morning only to find one small feature been quietly slipped down into it – The auto-complete list that pops up on email search. I frequently use email search and haven’t seen this feature before. So I am guessing it must have been there for not more than a couple of days.
Apart from the ‘expected’ listing of contacts and labels as you type, it even shows useful search criteria and operators which are relatively unknown to many users.
Some of the useful operators / search criteria that you can use:
» is – Use ‘is: read’, ‘is: unread’ or ‘is: starred’ to search for read, unread and starred messages respectively.
» has – Use this operator to find attachments, photos, videos, documents, calendar events, etc. For eg. ‘has: photos’ will display all emails that has photos in it.
» before, after – Use ‘before: yyyy/mm/dd’ and ‘after: yyyy/mm/dd’ to search emails received/sent before and after the specified date respectively. For eg. ‘before 2010/01/01’ will enlist all emails received/sent before 1st January 2010.
For the complete list of operators, click here.
February 23, 2010 23:37 pm by Jal
Rumors regarding Google Reader actually grabbing
feeds real time has been floating around the net since quite a while. We decided to speak our word only after some confirmation is made by Google. Turns out, Google has officially
confirmed ReadWriteWeb that RSS feed updates do get instantaneously reflected in Google Reader.
Google Reader now supports PubSubHubBub, a PUSH protocol that does all the real-time magic. Instead of having to poll for feeds at regular intervals, PubSubHubBub pushes the feed into Google Reader as and when the feed gets updated/modified.
This naturally raises the question, what if a website is not PubSub-enabled? Well, FYI, most of the high profile blogs are PubSub-enabled. If you own a WordPress blog, install PubSub plugin to enable real-time publishing.
Go to Google Reader
February 23, 2010 16:09 pm by Jal
Everyone loves customizability and that is why at TechExplorer we regularly include posts related to
desktop customization. Today we’ll feature a small application called the ‘Start Orb Creator’ developed by a deviantArt user
Blizo.
Start Orb Creator lets you use a custom image as your Start button image. The application is very intuitive and self explanatory. Just choose your image and set effects like outer glow and shadow for ‘hover’ and ‘pressed’ states.
Download Start Orb Creator / 1.2 MB
